Gov. Larry Hogan's top housing official said Friday that he wants to look at loosening state lead paint poisoning laws, saying they could motivate a mother to deliberately poison her child to obtain free housing.Kenneth C. Holt, secretary of Housing, Community and Development, told an audience at the Maryland Association of Counties summer convention here that a mother could just put a lead fishing weight in her child's mouth, then take the child in for testing and a landlord would be liable for providing the child with housing until the age of 18.Pressed afterward, Holt said he had no evidence of this happening but said a developer had told him it was possible. "This is an anecdotal story that was described to me as something that could possibly happen," Holt said.He offered no specific proposals, but said he hoped to limit the liability of landlords in lead paint cases. He said his department is working with the Maryland Department of the Environment to draft legislation for the 2016 General Assembly session.Health advocates reacted by saying they would fight any effort to weaken lead paint protections — and Holt's suggestion that parents might poison their children to gain housing benefits provoked outrage."To me it's beneath contempt," said Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health science at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health.

Of course it's beneath contempt.

Just when I think that Republicans cannot get any more evil, they outdo themselves.